My Halloween Mantle and other creepy decor

My Halloween mantle this year is brought to you courtesy of the creative people in blogland (and some Hobby Lobby and Target Clearance items).

The "Eat Drink and Be Scary" download is from Craftily Ever After who also has some other fun download options.  It adds a fun punch of orange to my mostly black and white collection.

The other framed pictures are graphics that I downloaded from the Graphics Fairy.  Again, a great place for images for what ever projects you are working on.

All I did was print them and insert them in frames of pictures we normally use (sorry about the wedding picture, hun.  It will be back in November, probably.  :-))

Then I found these great labels ready to go, here, and I had to make a little potion collection.  My daughter was very insistent that we use colored water, although the colors don't show up too well in this picture since I wanted them to be dark.  We just found interesting shaped bottles (yes, those are some of the left-over IBC bottles from the pirate party, now turned "life-renewal potion"), glued on the labels and filled will water tinted with food coloring.

Do you like my jar of eyeball.  We inherited some of those gummy eyeball candies a year or two ago, but they were pretty gross to eat, so they were hanging out with my cake decorating stuff (gross, I know).  They had dried out and hardened, so I popped them in this bottle that used to hold capers, I think, with some corn syrup to give them a little goo factor and a little more realism.  I think it does the trick!

Maybe these potions are what those little witches are stirring up. 

This dollar store bird perches on top of a moss topiary I use year-round.

The black lantern was a recent Target Clearance find--not intended for Halloween, but it seemed like it should have been.  The bird and pumpkin duo came from Hobby Lobby after Halloween clearance--when it was really cheap, a couple of years ago.

Everything sits on this gauzy cloth (Target, I think--maybe Dollar Tree), that enhances the eerie feel.

Our house has also turned into a bat cave.

I had traced all of these bats onto black poster board in a previous year, but never was able to bring my vision to fruition.  My daughter found them this year, and got busy cutting.  We used fishing line to suspend them from the upstairs railing.  They look even better in person.

One more Halloween decorating project to show you.  This one hasn't found it's permanent home, yet.  I purchased the vinyl on clearance at Hobby Lobby a while ago, but hadn't used it yet, because I wanted to be able to put it on something that I could put up and take down each year.  I rescued this small strip of beadboard from another project that my husband was trying to throw away.  Turns out it was the perfect length for the vinyl.  I used a paint pen to add the spider webs and little spiders by hand.  Undoubtedly, I was inspired by the Halloween clock that Chris @ Just a Girl created.

So how about you?  Is your house spooky yet?  (This is the spooky part--the mess that comes from having the kids on Fall Break is just plain scary!)

For more Halloween mantle inspiration go to the party at The Stories of A to Z